


Can't carry it with you (if you want to survive)

by lesbianjackrackham



Series: lungs [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, everyone in si-5 is fucked up about sex, everyone is a fucking disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-03-25 09:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13831026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianjackrackham/pseuds/lesbianjackrackham
Summary: A year ago he was being sentenced to prison.This is his life now.(a Doug Eiffel joins SI-5 AU)





	1. Chapter 1

“Again,” says Kepler.

Eiffel shoves Jacobi off him and tries to catch his breath. He’s lying flat on his back on the training floor of the gym, glaring up at Kepler and trying to ignore his aching muscles. As he sits up he can feel the bruises starting to form across his body, wincing from a particularly vicious elbow jab to the stomach. Jacobi just looks pleased with himself.

It’s been almost four months since Doug Eiffel died, and in the meantime Kepler has been running them _ragged,_ between missions, combat training, munitions training (Jacobi has built some pretty cool stuff, to be fair) and his own assignment to basically “build a better pulse beacon relay system,” because instantaneous communication isn’t fast enough for Goddard Futuristics and apparently he’s qualified to create something like that.

Meanwhile, he’s definitely qualified to get his ass kicked by his coworker slash fuck buddy slash ‘ _they haven’t actually done anything in a while so it’s weird but Jacobi still won’t talk about it and both of them are (presumably) still fucking around with their boss in the meantime,’_ while said boss watched the ass kicking.

A year ago he was being sentenced to prison.

This is his life now.

Eiffel doesn’t bother trying to hide his discomfort as he stands up, grunting, and glares at Kepler. Standard Goddard athletic wear is grey on grey with a black GF stamped on the front of the t-shirt, but for some reason both Jacobi and Kepler are wearing a size too small and it makes Eiffel want to murder them both.

“Why doesn’t Maxwell have to do this?”

“Dr. Maxwell is working on her endurance today.” Eiffel looks over where Maxwell is in the room next to theirs, attached to some kind of breathing apparatus and running on a treadmill. She must feel them staring at her, because she looks over and throws up her middle finger without breaking her stride.

He sympathizes until he realizes that Kepler is going to eventually make him do that too.

“Again,” says Kepler, and before Eiffel can do anything Jacobi has him pinned to the floor.

Eiffel has three inches and maybe fifteen pounds on him, but Jacobi is fast, strong, and ruthless, trapping Eiffel with his knees and thighs and what Eiffel hopes in an unloaded gun to the back of his head as he knocks Eiffel’s teeth into the vinyl mat. He manages to roll out from under Jacobi with an undignified shimmy and an elbow to the man’s face, but Jacobi straddles him again by choking him on his shirt (oh) and then cracks the gun over his nose.

“What the _fuck,_ ” he yells, and grabs for Jacobi's face, but the other man just laughs and pulls out of reach, stands up and dashes away. Eiffel staggers to his feet and gently touches his nose. It doesn’t feel broken, thankfully, but his fingers come away red and he tastes blood in the back of his throat.

“Again,” says Kepler from somewhere behind them.

“Hold on,” says Eiffel. He sees Jacobi lunge for him out of the corner of his eye and, like the dignified secret agent he is, he runs away. Jacobi cackles as he runs after him, around the various exercise equipment and past the wall of windows separating them and Maxwell, and he’s pretty sure she’s laughing at him too.

“Eiffel...”

“If he can’t catch me this shit doesn’t matter!” He yells back. “The best offense is a good—” He trips over a free weight someone left off the rack and goes down. Eiffel manages a roll so he doesn’t completely fuck up his body, but Jacobi is on him immediately, pinning his arms down and grinding his face into the floor.

“Get off me,” he mumbles into the mat, “get off me, get off—”

Jacobi lets him go, pulls himself to the side and nudges Eiffel in the shoulder. Eiffel pushes up onto his forearms and then into a seat. Kepler walks over as he wipes at his nose with his shirt, staining it with blood and mucus.

The first rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight Club, and the second rule of Fight Club is don’t join Fight Club because it sucks.

“Are you done?” Kepler asks, and Eiffel just looks up at him.

“Am I done?” He parrots, and stands up carefully. “This clearly isn’t working—”

“It clearly isn’t,” says Kepler darkly, and Eiffel swallows a mouthful of blood. Kepler stares him down and Eiffel feels like a teenager, standing in front of the teacher with bruised knuckles and flimsy excuses. The bloody nose is the same, leaking steadily, and Eiffel lets it run over his lips before licking it away.

“Sir,” he says, and Kepler raises an eyebrow. Jacobi is sitting lazily at their feet, watching the conversation and fiddling with the gun.

“I need you to prove to me that you will fight for your life,” says Kepler, and Eiffel wrinkles his nose, wincing a little at the movement.

“I’m doing that.” Kepler shakes his head.

“Oh you’re fighting, sure. I’ve seen you in action Eiffel, and well, it’s not pretty. Sometimes you get the job done, and sometimes you don’t. But you’re still rolling and showing your neck. You’re prey, Eiffel. I need you to be a predator. I need you to _attack_.”

Eiffel keeps watching Kepler. The man is nearly unreadable on his best days and today Eiffel is getting nothing, just a stern look like he’s waiting for Eiffel to understand what he’s saying, like this is his patient face and his patience is not going to last much longer.

“Okay,” says Eiffel, even though he totally doesn’t understand it, but he’s tired and he hurts and he doesn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. “Sir.”

Kepler nods and says, “again.”

Jacobi is on him in an instant, and Eiffel’s not sure when he got up, but his arms are around Eiffel’s waist, tugging him back to the ground. Kepler side-steps them, almost casually, and watches Jacobi pin him once again with the gun to Eiffel’s head.

“You still don’t get it,” says Kepler, shaking his head as Jacobi gets off and helps Eiffel back to his feet. Eiffel shrugs him off, pulls away from Jacobi and wipes his face again with his shirt. He’s going to have to toss this thing now.

After seven months at Goddard, his body doesn’t feel like his own anymore. The “dad bod” he so carefully acquired through pizza and beer was carved away and he’s left with something harder. Eiffel has muscles, and he can take a punch. He can take _multiple_ punches, and return some as well, through clearly not as well as Kepler wants him to. But he doesn’t want to hurt Jacobi, even though he knows the other man has no problem taking him down.

His body doesn’t feel like his own because his body _isn’t_ his own, he isn’t his own, he is. He is.

He is not thinking about that, any of that, because Kepler hands Jacobi a knife.

Eiffel is still trying to figure out where he was hiding it (seriously, those are tight pants,) when Kepler says, “Mr. Jacobi, make it more interesting.”

“Sir,” says Eiffel, and he’s not panicking, but his pulse has jumped to his throat. Jacobi tests the blade against his thumb and seems satisfied.

Kepler just looks at him with that same impatient glare and says, “Mr. Eiffel, fight for your life.”

He runs.

It’s another mad dash around the gym, and there’s no time to look back at Jacobi and yell “ _what the fuck_ ” before the man has him cornered by the medicine balls. Eiffel tries to get away but Jacobi lunges for him, knife first, and slashes his forearm, a shallow cut that stings and blooms blood as he yelps and pulls away. Jacobi, face masked with an unusual stoicism, comes at him again and Eiffel manages to block him with his other arm and then punches Jacobi in the face.

Things devolve from there. Or evolve, depending on who’s looking at it.

They go to ground again and grapple, Eiffel blocking Jacobi’s Norman Bates impression with his hands and arms. He’s only vaguely aware of the blood decorating Jacobi’s face and neck, his blood, and instead drags his knee up to pin Jacobi to the ground by his neck. As the other man wheezes, Eiffel digs the knife out of his hand, cutting up his fingers and palm in the process. and tosses it across the room. Then he catches Jacobi’s hands, and even slick with blood he manages to hold him down.

Sometime during the fight Kepler walked over to them, and when Eiffel looks up the man has a small smile dancing on his face.

 _There we go,_ Eiffel thinks, and he knows Kepler is thinking it to.

Here it is again: Kepler’s uncanny ability to do… whatever the fuck this is to him, send him out of his head, push him in the exact right way so the job gets done, bringing out a piece of him he didn’t know was there.

What had Maxwell said about Kepler offering them exactly what they wanted and then making them work to keep it?

Yeah. It’s a problem when he doesn’t know what this is, or if he wants it, but he’s working for it anyway.

Jacobi is choking below him, eyes wide, but Eiffel waits until Kepler nods before letting him up. He watches Jacobi catch his breath, choking a bit as he tries to swallow down air, and then get up and walk towards the front of the room. Eiffel stays seated on the floor and looks back up at Kepler, who looks smugly satisfied.

“There are some…interesting things coming down the pipe,” says Kepler, as Jacobi comes back with a first aid kit. He sits down next to Eiffel and starts examining the cuts, most of which are still dripping blood onto the floor, but Eiffel is too high on adrenaline to notice. He has a vague concern for the slash on his palm, but instead of helping he just sits and lets Jacobi prod at him. “I need to make sure we’re ready.”

“For what?” Kepler smiles down at him, and Eiffel thinks his teeth might be sharper than usual.

“The big picture.” The sentence hangs in the air for a moment, and then Jacobi clears his throat.

“Major, a few of these might need stitches.”

Kepler nods. “Get him to medical. I’ll finish up with Dr. Maxwell.” He leaves them on the floor and moves towards the other room, and if Eiffel didn’t know better he’d say the man was whistling.

“Hey,” says Jacobi, “you with me?” Eiffel makes a noise of agreement, and slowly they stand back up, Jacobi keeping pressure on Eiffel’s arm. They start to walk towards the exit, Eiffel limping and Jacobi holding him, one of his hands pressed over Eiffel’s forearm and the other in Eiffel’s hand, and his hands are warm, even through the gauze. “Nice job stepping it up. I thought I was going to have to kick your ass all afternoon.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes. There are others in the hallway, most Eiffel doesn’t recognize, but everyone ignores them, steps aside or hurries ahead. What a picture they must be: both of them covered in blood and Eiffel bleeding and nearly curled into Jacobi’s arms, and even stranger, that this is no cause for concern.

The pain has returned, sharper than before, but Jacobi is warm and solid, and Eiffel wonders if this is what made it so hard to hit him back, knowing the other ways they’ve touched each other.

Jacobi didn’t have a problem hitting him, he thinks. And hearing the other man wheeze, Eiffel knows he conquered that problem pretty quickly.

Eiffel grunts. “How’s your neck?”

“How’s my— dude, I sliced you up with a knife. We’re even.” Jacobi laughs, jostling him, and Eiffel hisses at the movement. “Besides, you only pinned me once. I still have like, five up on you.”

“Yeah, well you’re the one dragging me to medical.”

“So?”

Eiffel doesn’t have an answer for that. Instead he says, “what do you think Kepler meant by ‘big picture’?” Jacobi shrugs, and nearly dislodges Eiffel entirely. “ _Ow_.”

“I guess we’ll find out when it’s important.” Up ahead is the unmarked door of the base’s medical facilities, which shares the same space as biomedical research and engineering. Eiffel is pretty sure they run more experiments on people rather than helping them, but he’ll be glad for a pain pill and those stitches. Jacobi takes their hands together and presses the buzzer at the entrance, leaving a trail of blood across it.

“Hey, I got a guy who lost a knife fight here,” he says into the intercom. Eiffel steps on Jacobi’s toes, nearly toppling them both.

“Fuck off, I _won_ the knife fight.”

Jacobi just laughs, and as the door swings open he says, “yeah, but who’s going to believe that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amand we’re back! Updates to this part will be sporadic, but there will be at least two more parts after it. Subscribe or follow me @lesbianjackrackham on tumblr to make sure you don’t miss updates!


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up one morning pinned to the bed with Jacobi’s mouth around his cock. The other man mumbles “good morning,” throwing one arm over Eiffel’s stomach to keep him in place.

“No,” says Eiffel, pulling away. He nearly kicks Jacobi in the face in the process, but manages to extract himself without hurting either of them. “Nonono, no, nope!” He can’t see what Jacobi did with his boxers, so he grabs one of his pillows and holds it in front of his crotch. From the bottom of the bed, Jacobi pouts, and Eiffel really shouldn’t find it endearing, but he does, and it’s not like his dick hasn’t taken an interest in the situation, but he’s not going to tell Jacobi that.

He hasn’t seen the man in a few days, not since he got loaned out to Special Projects to test some rocket boosters that kept accidentally blowing up, even though Jacobi kept insisting he was better at making things blow up rather than preventing things from blowing up. The rest of them—him, Maxwell, and Kepler—had been on edge all week. Eiffel caused a base-wide blackout with his work on the pulse-beacon relay system, while Kepler and Maxwell nearly got into a screaming match over a missing mission report, and Eiffel had to enlist Rachel Young in calming them down.

(He now owes Young an indeterminate favor, which is absolutely terrifying.)

None of them had known when Jacobi was going to get back, but the answer was right now, right in front of him, in Eiffel’s bed. There’s the edge of relief undercutting Eiffel’s confusion and panic, and he wants to check Jacobi over for injury and make sure he was returned in one piece. Jacobi, apparently, has other plans.

“What?” Jacobi asks, “It’s the morning. You said, in the morning—”

“What? _What_?” Eiffel’s voice has jumped about six octaves, and it takes him a moment to realize what the hell Jacobi is referencing: the last time Jacobi had been at his apartment, that night after the club. “It’s _a_ morning, not _the_ morning! There’s a fucking Quantum Leap in the middle! That was _months_ ago.”

“Do you want me to suck you off or not?” Eiffel stares at him.

“Do _you_ want to suck me off?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Well,” says Eiffel, “uh.” Jacobi crawls forward and starts reaching for the pillow. “Hold on! Hold on!”

“I’m getting a lot of mixed signals here.”

“Me with the mixed signals? You’re the one who—” And Eiffel stops, because there’s not really a great way to finish the sentence. He wants Jacobi to be here. And true: Jacobi did disappear last time, right into Kepler’s bed— but so did Eiffel. Kind of. He’s never been in Kepler’s bed. And technically, they were both in Kepler’s… with Kepler? Some kind of possessive grammar involving Kepler, before, after, and during all of that.

Fuck it, he doesn’t want to think about Kepler right now.

Eiffel runs a hand across his face. “When did you even get back?”

“Last night,” says Jacobi. “Wait— this morning? What time is it?” They both look at Eiffel’s clock, which reads 07:07 am, begging the question of how long Jacobi has been in his apartment.

“Have you been home yet?”

“Nope.” He runs a hand over his face again, because maybe if he does it enough he’ll wake up from this weird surrealist dream, and Jacobi won’t have crawled into his bed like—like that.

“Daniel,” he says, and he doesn’t know what to say. What the hell does he say? Boundaries aren’t a thing for them, for any of them, and every sentence he tries to begin seems cold and scolding, and really, nothing Daniel hasn’t heard before from Maxwell or even Kepler, and he doesn’t want to be that to him, to be _them_ to him. “Daniel—”

“Doug,” says Jacobi.

“Here’s my problem,” he says, and it’s rushed, but he wants to get it out before he overthinks it all again. “I like you, I think. But there’s two versions of you, Daniel and Jacobi, and I can’t— In my head, it’s all mixed up between what happens—happened, when you’re here, in my apartment, and what happens at work. Or even, like, at Maxwell’s! Like, part of you is, well, you, and then sometimes you’re here, and it’s like there’s a whole different person underneath that looks at me differently.” He sighs and runs both hands through his hair. “Am I making any sense?”

“No.”

“Okay, well. I’m looking at you right now, and I see that there’s a part of you that wants to run out of my apartment because I decided to start talking about feelings, or whatever,” Doug clears his throat and watches Daniel carefully. “And another part of you that wants to stay here while I make you an omelet. And not because it’s food. Because I’m making it for you.”

There’s a brief moment of silence, and then Daniel rolls up on his side, props himself up with his arm and says, “what kind of omelet?”

The omelet turns out to be scrambled eggs, because Doug doesn’t have any ingredients in his fridge, but he adds enough milk and butter to make them fluffy, and some of the spice blend the woman at the farmer’s market talked him into buying. They sit in relative silence at the little cafe table Doug had rescued from a closing restaurant down the block, eating.

“These are pretty good,” says Daniel.

“My specialty.”

Silence again. And because it takes about six minutes to eat scrambled eggs, it’s not long before they’re just sitting there staring at their plates.

“So—” he says, at the exact same time Daniel says, “Wanna—”

“Want to go out?” Doug asks.

“Out?” Daniel says, carefully.

“Yeah. Oh not— I mean, outside. Go outside. We already ate, but we could go walk around, enjoy the nice weather.”

“It’s Florida. The weather is always nice.”

“Hey man, once you spend time in prison, you learn to appreciate every sunny day. What do you think?”

“Uh, no,” says Daniel.

“Are you saying no because you don’t want to go for a walk, or because you feel uncomfortable with something like a date?”

“I go on dates.”

“Dates that aren’t ‘let’s spend ten minutes drinking before hooking up in the bathroom.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with that— you do you, with your bad self. No slut shaming from Doug Eiffel’s corner. Um. Shit.” Thankfully, Daniel laughs.

“No, it’s just. You said something before about… laying in bed all day, and I, uh.”

“You want to do that?”

“Yeah.”

Doug says, “cool.” They put their dishes in the sink and walk the few feet back to Doug’s bed. Doug had managed to rescue his boxers and a t-shirt before they ate, but Daniel was still fully dressed in an undershirt and tactical pants, smelling like sweat and rocket fuel. They must realize it at the same time, because Daniel starts to scrape at something on his pants with a frown. “Shower?” Doug suggests.

So they go to the bathroom. Doug turns on the water, because the knobs are a little tricky, and adjusts it to something warm and comfortable. Then he takes off his shirt. When he looks back, Daniel is just starting at him.

“What?”

“Oh,” says Daniel. “I didn’t think—”

“Do you not want me to?”

“No, I do,” he says quickly, neck flushing a deep pink. “I just. I didn’t realize.” Daniel interrupts himself by pulling his shirt over his head and dropping his pants, kicking them off into the corner. “Sorry.”

There are a lot of things he wants to say to that sorry. Like, _what the hell, did you think I was making you shower because I didn’t want you to stink up my bed?_ Or, _what kind of asshole made you shower before getting into bed with him?_ (He knows what kind of asshole. It’s a rhetorical question.)

“God, you have a really nice blush,” Doug says instead, and predictably, Daniel blushes deeper. He looks away and Doug steps up to him, but doesn’t touch him yet, just lingers in his sway. The room fills with steam that halos the light, giving everything a soft glow, and Doug takes the moment to check Daniel over, eyes wandering across a scatter of purpling bruises across his midsection and ruddy burns blistering up his forearms.

There’s some kind of perverse beauty to it—Daniel’s flushed chest highlighting the scars already set into his skin, and the new ones jutting out like paint on a canvas, and the heat of him, a low grade fever he can feel bounding off his body. Doug wants to check him for infection, to wrap him up and send him to bed alone, but here, with the heat between them and the steam of the shower, he can’t help but hover, frozen between the thought and the act.

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say shit like that.”

“Alright, sweetheart,” says Doug, and runs a hand up Daniel’s arm, careful of the burns. “I won’t.” Daniel looks back and squints up at him.

“You… won’t?”

“I’m not going to say or do anything you don’t like. You’re calling the shots here.”

“But,” says Daniel, and then he looks away again.

“But?”

“I… I mean, it’s better when you… god, shit. Are you really going to make me say it?” Doug just looks at him, trails his fingers around Daniel’s body and chasing the blush that’s spread across his entire body like a sunburn. He won’t say anything about it, but he really does like the look of it. “I like... when you… tell me to do. Stuff.”

“Okay,” says Doug. “I can do that.” He gets an idea, and says, “you’re doing really well.”

Daniel _shudders_ and sways into him, catching Doug’s shoulder with a wet mouth.

“Fuck,” says Daniel. Doug laughs and cards a hand into Daniel’s hair, his other catching Daniel around the waist.

“You wanna?”

“Shit, yes.”

“But after the shower,” Doug clarifies. Daniel pouts up at him again, and honestly, that’s really not fair. “Shower sex is the worst. I am klutzy as fuck, and not in a cute Zooey Deschanel way, and I have a great bed we should make use of.” He’s also not 100% sure Daniel could stay conscious for shower sex, but he doesn’t mention that part.

Daniel says, “ugh, fine,” and lets Doug finish stripping them both and lead him into the shower.

They don’t have shower sex, but they also don’t _not_ have shower sex, because there are only so many ways you can brush against someone else in the shower, only so many ways Doug can stand there with Daniel’s body pressed against his as he soaps the other man down, like every stupid porno in Doug’s collection, and this time when Daniel goes to his knees, shampoo still lathered in his hair and water beating down against his back Doug should say no, really, should say no.

But he’s tired of saying no.

So he brushes the shampoo away from Daniel’s face and lets him take him down, one hand braced against the tiled wall and the other in Daniel’s head, massaging the soap out of his hair (and it’s not the romantic shampooing Doug had imagined, but Daniel makes a noise when he tugs too hard, the good kind that echoes back up his cock, so he’s, ah, happy with the direction they’ve taken,) and when he’s close he pulls Daniel back with a gasp, nearly slipping in the tub, and manages to rinse off most of the remaining soap from them both before and dragging their wet bodies into his bed, Daniel on top of him laughing, laughing—

And afterwards, (or somewhere in the middle, when they lost track of time, and managed to knock Doug’s clock off the nightstand) Daniel says, so soft he nearly misses it, “I don’t know why it’s different with you,” and Doug pretends he doesn’t hear it, just wraps his arm tighter around the other man’s waist.


	3. Chapter 3

There are things worth stealing in Omaha, Nebraska, and other adventures by the artist formerly known as Douglas F. Eiffel.

It’s the four of them in a van (they drove there, and that’s another story he’s not going to get into, but spoilers, Eiffel heavily dislikes road trips now.) After nearly twenty-four hours of driving, non-stop service from Canaveral courtesy of Warren Kepler and an ungodly amount of coffee (and too few bathroom breaks,) they’re parked unceremoniously outside of a nondescript office building and possibly going insane. Or whatever you call two geniuses and a him carefully examining a map of the United States of America.

“It’s not the true mathematical center,” says Maxwell.

“Are we including...?”

“No, contiguous states only.”

“I’m offended on behalf of Hawaii and Alaska.”

“I’m offended on behalf of Puerto Rico and Guam.”

“Now hang on,” says Eiffel, tugging at the map. “That makes things interesting.”

“It really doesn’t.”

“With the changing coastline—”

“The next person to speak,” Kepler says slowly, “will have to walk home.” The threat is legitimate, even though it’s lightly snowing outside (in April. The Midwest is dumb.) And while Doug’s survived winters before, real ones, not the balmy weather they get in Florida, he doesn’t feel like walking the 1,500 miles back to Canaveral. Neither do Maxwell and Jacobi, apparently, because all three of them fall silent, though Maxwell continues to punch numbers into her calculator with a scowl.

Kepler’s sitting near the left side of the van, scrolling through a document on his tablet (though Eiffel is like, 30% sure he’s actually playing a game) while the three of them are huddled around the small table in the center. Eiffel imagines that the van used to be comfortable with three people, but four is pushing it, especially with all of Eiffel’s equipment set up against one of the walls. And while it’s bigger than one of those white “obviously murder vans,” they spend a significant amount of time touching each other—a hand on the shoulder to let someone know you’re passing by, crawling across someone to get supplies, using the closest body part as a pillow while you sneak a nap.

(Catching someone’s eye while the other two are asleep and realizing you could probably, (possibly?) close the space between the two of you without waking the others, silence each other with your mouths and heat the goddamn idle van with your touch, thinking, what if we had chosen the same wall to lean against, what if there wasn’t this distance between the two of you,

You close your eyes but you can’t sleep, and somehow you know his breathing well enough to know he doesn’t either.)

Normal coworker stuff.

Eiffel raises his hand, and Kepler raises an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“Can we talk about work stuff?”

“Would you subtly be speaking about finding the exact geographical center of the United States?”

“Why Major, do you really think we would do something like that? After you explicitly told us not to?”

“Am I underestimating you?”

“No,” says Jacobi. “No, no, no—”

“What’s wrong? Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about work?”

“I hate each one of you with every fiber of my being.” Eiffel laughs and rolls up the map, because he loves how much Jacobi hates Questions Only as much as the next person but they’ve been trapped in the van for more than ten hours now and the mission hasn’t even started yet. He thinks.

(There was that one time at the ice cream shop, but no one is allowed to make fun of him for it since that other time in Hoboken, so it all evened out in the end.)

“Hey, Major? Not that I’m not enjoying the happy fun van bonding time, but do we have an actual mission here?”

“Oh!” Maxwell says, jumping to her feet and nearly banging her head against the van’s roof. “I can answer that. Major, can I answer that? Since I— well, I didn’t, but technically I did, so...”

“Go ahead,” says Kepler, and Maxwell beams. She pulls out her laptop and another large piece of paper that she rolls across the table—blueprints of the building—then she sits back down.

“Right,” she says, clearing her throat. “This mission is essentially a trap. They stole tech from us, and now we’re here to steal it back. And they are absolutely expecting us. Hence, the multi-pronged approach.” She presses a button on the side of the table and with the help of some wacky Goddard technology the blueprints transfer to a 3D model that shimmers in front of them. Maxwell rotates the model and separates the layers of building that goes maybe ten floors underground and another five above ground.

“They aren’t networked, so I’m going to need to physically pull the code and take it from the computer,” she says, gesturing to a lower floor. “Jacobi and Eiffel,” she points at the two of them, “will attempt a smash and grab—aka blow a bunch of shit up and make it seem like they’re being raided by a larger team while Major Kepler and I track down the source. Then we’ll—”

“No.” Eiffel looks and sees Kepler gazing down at his tablet, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

“No to what?”

“Hm,” says Kepler, tapping something on the screen. “The plan.”

“But. Sir.” Maxwell stutters. “You approved this plan. I didn’t... this is the plan you—”

“Change of plans, Dr. Maxwell. We’re going Orange on the compound.” Eiffel feels Maxwell and Jacobi stiffen next to him, and the air in the van drops a few degrees.

“Sir—”

“That can’t really be…”

“Quiet.” Kepler says, standing, and they both stop talking. ”Jacobi, do you have enough supplies with you?”

“Uh, maybe. I’ll have to. I mean, I brought some extra but—”

“Mr. Jacobi.”

“Yes, sir. I’m all set.” Jacobi nearly jumps out of his seat and heads to the back of the van to presumably check on his inventory.

“Eiffel, I need you to shut down all communications in the compound.”

“For what, sir?” He asks hesitantly.

“Everything. Nothing in or out. But make it seem like everything’s fine. Maxwell you know the drill, get everything else—”

“Sir, my plan will work.” Maxwell vibrates in her chair, holding her laptop tightly but looking Kepler straight in the eye. Kepler narrows his eyebrows, and through the blue light of the hologram there’s an almost alien flush to him. Eiffel doesn’t know where to look. For a moment there’s dead silence with only the sound of Jacobi moving boxes in the back.

“Dr. Maxwell.”

“Major, we don’t have to do it this way. I know this will work.”

“That is Goddard Futuristics proprietary technology in there, and we cannot waste a second with this farce attempting to recover it. Our resources are better spent recreating the technology rather than risking losing it.”

“Major—”

“Is that clear?” Maxwell’s gaze doesn’t waver, but she takes a short breath and then leans back in her chair.

“Yes, sir.” Kepler nods, and then follows Jacobi to the back. Maxwell immediately starts working on something on her computer, but Eiffel doesn’t move to get to work, just looks over at Maxwell.

“Are we delivering a fruit basket? What the hell is an orange?”

“Full burn,” says Maxwell, not looking up from her screen.

“Full…” He trails off, and then he gets it. “What the fuck.”

“Don’t.”

“What the— there’s almost a hundred people in there. More, maybe.”

“Eiffel, don’t.” He shakes his head and bites his lip.

“No. I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” says Kepler, now standing over his shoulder, and Eiffel’s never going to get used to that but he manages not to flinch this time, just swivels in his chair to face him. Even scrunched up near the ceiling, shoulders and neck bent in a way Eiffel knows is uncomfortable, Kepler barely looks annoyed. “You will. You already have.”

Eiffel shakes his head again. “I haven’t—”

“Between your service time and your year here, yeah, you have. You may not have pulled the trigger every time, but don’t think your death count is so low. This is just… more efficient.”

“This isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Yes it is. And I think you’re worried because that little voice telling you to be upset isn’t there. Because you don’t care as much as you think you should. You’re upset at your own apathy and your own absolute inability to give a shit. Really, you’re more upset on Dr. Maxwell’s behalf, which is chivalrous and all, but she’s already over it because she’s a big girl and understands that when I make a decision it’s because _I_ have more information and am making calls beyond your clearance level.”

Eiffel opens his mouth to respond and he nearly does, nearly says _no, you’re wrong, I do care, and I really, really don’t want to help you blow up a bunch of people, you fucking psychopath._

But.

He’s waiting for that little voice inside of him to respond, to argue, to help him stand up and storm out into the middle of a snow storm in fucking Nebraska, fuck the consequences, but it’s not there. Fucking Jiminy Cricket left the party without so much as a Dear John letter. God, he wants to care, he wants to be a guy that cares, wants to be the guy that says _there’s gotta be another way_ all martyr like, but looking up at Kepler he can’t think of a good reason to. Beside, you know, the obvious. But his _wah murder bad_ button was already broken, and this is just the dial turned up to eleven.

He said “no” because of a reflex, said “I can’t” because of a fucking reflex of the guy he used to be.

The problem is, the guy he used to be also killed people, one at a time, and when it got easy to kill he drank, and even though there was a brief, brief moment in his life where he didn’t drink, and he didn’t kill, it’s barely a passing, painful memory.

Now he’s just a guy, sitting in front of another guy, and he’s going to help blow up a building because—

Well. He’s not going to think through the because. But it’s because of the guy.

(Both guys. The guy he is, and the guy standing in front of him. And the guy he was before, which is the same as the guy he is now, and the metaphor is falling apart. Shut up.)

Eiffel looks up at Kepler and thinks, _you motherfucker, you had me at hello._

Then he nods, slides over to his station, and gets to work.

Later, much, much later, Kepler drives them three hours out of the way to a small stone marker just north of Lebanon, Kansas, and even though it’s dark out they take an absolutely horrible group photo. First Kepler takes one of the three of them, and then after some cajoling and inappropriate stacking of Goddard equipment, they manage one of all four of them—Kepler, Jacobi, himself, and Maxwell, badly lit by the camera flash against the fresh snow and all of them sweaty and dusted with soot and char.

Maxwell will argue that it doesn’t count because the measurement was last taken in 1918, but standing there at the (apparent) center of the United States, Eiffel can’t bring himself to mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me on tumblr @lesbianjackrackham


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (uhhhhh sorry)

There’s no prelude to a bad day. There never is.

But there’s a little girl. And she’s the wrong age and looks nothing like Anne—blonde, for one, none of Kate’s dark curls—but he spots her waving her hands around enthusiastically, and at first he dismisses it but then her parents wave back, tracing their fingers carefully through the air. He’s at the grocery store of all places, staring at a package of chicken cutlets and trying to decide if he’s actually going to make them or if they’re going to go bad in his fridge, and he doesn’t know the signs because he never learned them, never had a chance or a reason to try and learn them, not when Kate was never going to let Anne visit him.

They catch him staring and he manages a smile and a nod before abandoning the chicken and the rest of his basket, and shortly afterwards he wanders into a bar, calls the bartender over and just like any kind of joke, he orders a drink

(Hey, why the long face?)

He drinks gin because he hates gin. He was a beer guy, before, but beer is slow and he can’t be slow tonight; tequila tastes like nights on base in Basic; vodka was Kate’s drink, next; and whiskey is… well, he’s not drinking whiskey. Not tonight.

But god can he picture it, tasting whisky in a heavy crystal glass, or a swig from a flask still warm from body heat, the bittered sweetness of where Kepler’s lips have been, great fucking whisky, because he’s a snob like that and spends his money like he knows how to spend that much money, unquestioning and unabashedly, trading blood for money for whiskey. Blood whiskey that tastes the same going down as it would on his lips, Kepler’s lips that he hasn’t— His body that he hasn’t—

(Earlier in Kepler’s office, pressed tight against the wall with one hand on Kepler’s bicep and the other brushing the hem of Kepler’s shirt, and Kepler has one hand in Eiffel's pants and the other arm bracing his chest, and Eiffel keeps his eyes open as long as he can, studying Kepler’s micro expressions and his breath hot on his face, barely any space to cross and crash their lips together or slip his own hand down Kepler’s pants but any move, any thought is redirected, denied, and like clockwork Eiffel finishes and is sent back out the door, sated but unsatisfied.)

And fine, if this is where his hyper-fixated spiral is going to take him, so be it, because god, he needs to get his shit together with Kepler, Kepler who is there, always there, touching him, looking at him, dismantling him six different ways before Eiffel can catch his breath, and Eiffel’s always been that kind of guy, the guy that falls fast, cards on the table, but this is something different, this kind of ‘yes sir’ dedication that twists him up and leaves him aching like Uncle Sam and Ms. America never could, this ‘look at me senpai’ anime bullshit and he hates it, he _hates it_ —

He sticks with gin. Gin is safe, comparatively.

Eiffel's a stupid drunk because he’s always been a stupid drunk, but when he gets to the bar he gives the bartender his car keys because he’s made that mistake before, yessiree, and he doesn’t think Goddard will bail him out of prison a second time, and like, he doesn’t want to kill anymore kids. Not that he doesn’t know how many kids he’s killed in the past year. Fuck.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but it’s a while, long enough to watch the sun set behind him, long enough that the bartender changes shifts at some point, closes his tab and asks if she can call him that cab yet. He just laughs and leaves her a big tip, puts that blood money to good use, and the new guy is happy to take his money too, to slide another glass across the counter. And another. And.

And sometime after that (and it’s harder to track the passage of time after the sun has set, not that he was trying—it’s kind of the opposite of what he was trying to do, actually,) he gets some company. Eiffel knows him when he comes in, clocks him checking in with the doorman and Eiffel manages to down another drink before Jacobi makes his way through the crowd and settles at his shoulder.

“What’s this swill?” Jacobi asks, pointing at Eiffel’s glass. He has to yell a bit above the ambient noise that Eiffel’s just noticing, the background invading the bubble he made with his hunched shoulders.

“The swill is the point,” he says and takes another swig for emphasis

“I thought you were done with this bullshit.”

“Did you steal his line? Is that what he uses on you?” Eiffel laughs. He’s seen the aftermath of Kepler dragging Jacobi out of a self-destructive stupor the few times Maxwell wasn’t around to supervise, where he finds Daniel in his lab with an oversized cup of coffee and new bruises he can’t help playing with, an unconscious habit of retracing the path of fingers and teeth and fists. Eiffel can’t begrudge him that anymore than he can help watch Jacobi do it, alight with imagination and indignation. “I don’t get done with this bullshit. This is who I am.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“I’m an alcoholic,” he says, drawing out the word, thick and heavy on his tongue, “and this isn’t a fucking Hallmark movie. Are you here to save me Daniel?”

“Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to.” He finishes his drink and waves the bartender over, gets another glass of… well, he’s really not sure now, he’s lost track, but it does the job, bites at the back of his throat when he throws it back. It’s not whiskey, and he knows that much. Eiffel’s a masochist, but he’s not that much of a masochist. Except:

“It goes easier with him, doesn’t it?” He asks, elbowing Jacobi, because if he took his hands off the bar he might fall over. “He just drags you out, and you go? Just whistles and—” Eiffel tries to whistle but blows a raspberry instead, sending spittle across the bar top.

“Hey,” says Jacobi, who’s not even looking at him, just gently tugging at his arm. “Let’s not do this here.” Eiffel tries to shake him off but his arms don’t work like that, barely good enough to hold him up or hold the drink to his lips. Up, then down. He can still manage repetitive motion. He’s good at repetitive motion.

(Load the magazine, cock it, fire, and again—)

“Did he send you here?” Eiffel asks, suddenly. “He couldn’t even… he sends _you_.” He doesn’t mean to spit the last word, not with so much spite, but there’s a bitterness to the night he’s lost control of, and Jacobi’s here ( _he’s_ here) in the path of his anger. And usually Jacobi’s willing to jump on a fucking grenade for him (not him, Eiffel, but _him_ , god what is it, the fucking pronoun game?) but apparently he’s not having it tonight because his nostrils flare and he grips Eiffel’s arm a little harder.

“What the hell is your problem?” Eiffel laughs, a dark thing bubbling up from deep inside of him and he stares Jacobi down as best he can. He’s always had a loose tongue but drinking made it looser, a steady stream of all the things he doesn’t say, really shouldn’t say brought up to the surface.

“It’s dirty laundry night here at the... whatever the fuck bar. Time to air it out. Come on. You’re here for _him_ , you fucking lapdog.” He sneers and tries to take another drink but his glass is empty. He taps it against the counter but the bartender is out of sight, and besides, Jacobi takes the glass from his hands and sets it just out of reach.

He’s looking at Eiffel like— god, he hates this look, that _look at this sad motherfucker_ , look, pity and frustration and anger all flickering across his face, a fucking record in the ‘Doug Eiffel Disappointment Show.’ Even Kate lasted longer than this, dried him out a few times before refusing to do it again. And here’s Jacobi, flashing that resentment around freely like Eiffel is a familiar burden, like he’s his fucking responsibility, like he’s— what? Who the hell is Doug Eiffel to Daniel Jacobi?

Who the hell is Doug Eiffel to any of them?

“You’re not here for me, don’t pretend. Don’t pre— Shit.” There’s a tremor to his body where the fire’s burned out, and he wants to refuel it, stoke it, but there’s a heaviness now, an exhaustion that leaves him slumped over, half on the bar and half in Jacobi’s arms.

“Doug...” Jacobi says, and Eiffel shakes and grasps at the fabric of Jacobi’s shirt. His fingers can’t decide if he’s holding him or pushing him away.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t you fucking.”

Daniel touches him anyway, slowly gathers him up and takes him out the door. The world outside is humid like a steam room, and he hates it, he hates Florida, hates the fucking swamp filled with dinosaurs and all kinds of monsters, and it’s good that they all live here, in the swamp with the other monsters. He thinks he’s rambling, his thoughts slipping past his teeth like smoke. He wants a cigarette. Hey Daniel, do you have a cigarette?

And somehow Daniel’s hand has slipped under his shirt, supporting his waist with small circles thumbed into his back and murmuring something feverish into his neck. Then they’re in a cab and Daniel’s fighting with the seat belt and he’s fighting back, swinging his limbs in a panic and catching Daniel’s face with his nails and—

—he wakes up next to the toilet in his bathroom.

Memories of the night before comes back in pieces, flimsy and blurred a cardboard puzzle dropped in a bathtub.

He smells piss and it might be him, or it’s just the proximity to the toilet bowl, but the porcelain is cool on his cheek, and if the room decided to stop spinning he could check if he soiled himself. There’s the familiar linger of death and vomit in his mouth, his body’s last ditch attempt to save him from alcohol poisoning. And great— it’s worked. He’s not dead. Yay.

It takes about ten minutes, but Eiffel manages to pull himself to his feet, and with one hand balanced against the sink he relieves the pressure on his bladder, distantly thankful that he managed not to piss himself in the night. It’s also then that he realizes that he’s not wearing any pants.

He deliberately ignores the mirror and slowly wanders out of the bathroom to the smell of coffee from his kitchen where, so his absolute surprise, he finds Alana Maxwell fighting with his coffee maker.

“Uh,” he rasps, and Maxwell notices him.

“Daniel had to leave,” she says, smacking the coffee maker again. “I got called in for the second shift of team ‘make sure Eiffel doesn’t choke on his own vomit.’”

“I. Uh.”

“He was the one that took off your pants. In case you were wondering.”

“I was, actually.” Maxwell blinks at him through her glasses.

“...You can put the pants back on now.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. I’ll just.” The apartment feels too small as he steps around the corner to his bed where his pants, wallet and phone lay, tossed haphazardly onto the carpet. He bypasses the jeans from the night before, kicking them closer to the bed and instead slips on a pair of sweatpants from his laundry pile. Back in the kitchen, Maxwell’s poured them both a mug of coffee and he accepts one gratefully and joins her at the table. “So,” he says.

“Is this going to be a thing now?” Maxwell asks, and he shrugs one shoulder.

“It was kind of… always a thing.” He sips the coffee and hides a grimace—he’d forgotten that Maxwell makes really bad coffee, mostly because she’s forgotten what coffee actually tastes like when it hasn't sat burnt at the bottom of a pot for weeks on end. But it drowns out the other tastes in his mouth, so that’s something. “I don’t. I really don’t know.

“Well… call one of us, next time.”

“Binge drinking isn’t really a thing you do with other people.”

“Exactly.” He shakes his head.

“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just...”

“Try,” she says, flatly, and the bitter voice from last night thinks, _you fucking child, do you think I didn’t try? For them? For her? I’m not some algorithm you can tweak and tweak until it’s perfect, until I’m debugged and who you want me to be. Who the fuck are you to ask this of me?_

But he’s too sick, too tired to spew the vitriol, to push back against Maxwell’s nativity, as good natured as it is. So he nods into his mug and pretends to take another sip, just lets the bitter liquid splash against his closed lips and scald his skin.

It’s fine.

(It has to be fine.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [chapter art](https://tanis-drawings-2point0.tumblr.com/post/172425408355/did-he-send-you-here-eiffel-asks-suddenly-he) by @taniushka12


	5. Chapter 5

Summer in Florida is a right pain in the ass. There’s an exceptional weight to it, a thick haze of humidity that sits on his skin like a sweater and holds everyone in a perpetual state of irritation and sweat.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a good kick to a struggling air conditioning unit that seems to whisper _fuck you_ as it sputters it’s last breath.

“We’re three engineers,” Eiffel says, scowling at the machine.

“Is that like three kings?” Jacobi calls from the couch.

“What?”

“Like the Christmas carol. _We three kings of Orient..._ ”

“That’s racist,” Maxwell comments.

“I didn’t write the damn song!”

“As I was saying,” Eiffel says, poking the air conditioning unit with a screwdriver. “You’d think between the three of us we’d be able to, you know, fix this thing?”

“I make things blow up.”

“I could turn it into a battle bot?”

“You’re both useless,” he mutters, and yanks off the cover. He has his hair pulled up into a loose bun just to get it off his neck, but without any air circulating through his apartment it doesn’t make any difference. Maxwell and Jacobi are parked on his couch, somehow not bothered by the heat, or at least not bothered enough to come help him figure out what’s wrong with the air conditioning. They’ve also pointed his two standing fans at themselves, which is just par for the course.

He’d take his shirt off, but he doesn’t think his tank top is the main cause of his heat exhaustion, and also Jacobi would throw dollar bills at him. Eiffel’s pretty sure he carries them around just in case it happens. He’s taken about seventy-five dollars from him because of that, so it could be worth getting Jacobi to pay for a new unit.

Except shirtlessness makes Maxwell uncomfortable so his clothes stay on, even though the fabric is clinging to his skin.

Meanwhile, she’s really taken this whole “babysitting” thing to heart, unsubtly poking around Eiffel’s kitchen and drawers and garbage and bank account statements like she’s his personal AA sponsor. Or college RA, though he’s only seen that sort of thing in movies.

He has no idea why Jacobi’s here. It’s not like— well.

They’ve gone from “will they won’t they” too “they’re not,” from “on again off again” to “off, definitely off.” He still doesn’t know what he said that night or who Jacobi told (he’s sure Maxwell knows, at least the gist of it, and it’s like they’ve taken a step back, not that they were ever close, closer than coworkers, sure, but she’s quieter with him now, careful with her words like she’s trying not to spook him, and with Kepler—

Well.

It’s like he’s himself a year ago, freshly sprung from prison and just the guy in the van, quiet and surly and an outsider to their little clique, Kepler and the Wonder Twins, back when he was alive and they could shove him back into prison if he didn’t get his shit together.

Now they’d dispose of his body the way he’s learned to, the way he’s helped to—unless the rumors of mind control devices from Subfloor Theta are accurate—and he spends too much time musing over if they’d take care of him themselves or if they’d pass the job off to another team.)

But really, there’s no good way to say, “hey I alcoholiced so hard that I don’t remember what happened and I feel like I said some weird things. Mind filling me in?”

Anyway.

What he means to say is that it’s fine, and life goes on. And summer in Florida sucks.

“It’s almost time to leave anyway,” says Maxwell. Eiffel pokes his air conditioner again. Right. Team dinner night. That’s why they’d followed him home. He’d have come up with some kind of excuse for not going, but honestly, it couldn’t be weirder than his first one, all those months ago. Plus, presumably, Kepler’s apartment has working AC. Eiffel stretches and tosses the screwdriver on the coffee table.

“Yeah,” he says, “let me just shower real quick.” He grabs a change of clothes and shuts himself in the bathroom. Even over the sound of the water he can hear Maxwell and Jacobi speaking, and he doesn’t want to think that they’re talking about him, but he still spends a few too many minutes in the bathroom when he’s done and dressed, trying to hear what they’re saying. But he can’t, so he tosses his hair up in a damp bun and follows them out the door.

They still make him drive, which is almost a comfort.

Dinner is some kind of grilled fish with veggies on skewers, he’s not paying attention when Kepler describes the dish because he’s wearing an apron and waving around a pair of tongs, and Eiffel’s pretty sure he blacks out because he finds himself on the couch with Maxwell with no memory of how he got there. Thankfully, when Kepler and Jacobi come back inside the apron is gone and Eiffel can breathe again.

It’s good, because everything that Kepler cooks is good, and of the three of them Eiffel eats the most vegetables, which earns him a small smile. Maxwell complains that she didn’t get to play with the “food swords,” and neither Eiffel or Jacobi says much at all.

They wash up. Kepler puts aside some leftovers and then they gather on the couch to watch the last half of Die Hard 2 while Jacobi mutters about jet fuel and how no one in Hollywood knows how to blow stuff up correctly. When the movie ends Jacobi pulls away to smoke, and after a minute Kepler follows him out. Maxwell changes the channel to some cartoon he doesn’t recognize, and he doesn’t mean to but he dozes off for a bit. The pattern of the night shouldn’t be soothing, but it is, a weird half-domestic theater, and he’s less familiar with the genre, but like episodic, junk-food television there’s a comfort in the routine, the roles, the tropes, the laugh track. The way it all wraps up in the end.

The only sounds are the background hum of a muted television and Maxwell’s soft breathing. Eiffel pulls away gently, stands up and stretches. One last scene for the night.

He finds Kepler and Jacobi on the porch, doing their bit, and he doesn’t put too much effort into a mumbled goodbye because he doesn’t want to linger too long, not in the space outside their bubble, but before he pulls back Kepler says, “Eiffel, why don’t you... stick around for a bit?”

“Sir?” He asks tentatively, like he must have misheard him.

“Maxwell can take a cab. Stay a bit.”

Jacobi keeps smoking but Kepler’s looking at him, a smirk creeping onto his face, and Eiffel follows the curve of his lips, the trail in his words and thinks, _oh_.

Oh.

Kepler sees him get it, sees him get there, and smiles fully with a flash of teeth. Jacobi still hasn’t turned around, just lounging cross-armed against the deck railing, staring out into the distance. It’s a view but it’s not that interesting, palm trees and a canal, and it’s one Eiffel knows the other man has memorized, and he’s got to be listening in. Jacobi knows what’s going on.

Eiffel looks back at Kepler, and Kepler’s still smiling.

Eiffel says, “alright,” and the word flicks off his tongue before the thought’s fully formed.

He doesn’t remember walking back to Maxwell, who’s waiting for him by the door, and it takes him a moment to find his words again.

“I’m, uh, going to stay a bit longer. Are you okay in a cab?”

She studies him for what seems like a full minute, then she marches past him towards the porch, throwing open the screen door and pointing her finger at Kepler’s chest. Jacobi stubs out his cigarette and turns to watch as Eiffel catches up and joins them outside, sliding the screen door shut behind him.

“This is you?” She asks, very quietly.

“Dr. Maxwell—”

“Don’t Dr. Maxwell me, Warren. Do I need to stay and supervise this nonsense?”

“Alana…”

“Did he even ask you, Daniel?” She snaps, nostril flaring. A mosquito lands on her arm and Eiffel itches to swat it away. To Kepler she says, “are you fucking with both of them right now?”

“Dr. Maxwell.”

“Yes. I heard it,” she growls, and then she turns back to Eiffel. The mosquito takes off. “Can you. Can. Doug, go back in the kitchen.”

“What?”

“Just...” She points back at the apartment. His eyes flick up to Kepler’s and he just raises his eyebrows lazily at him, so Eiffel nods and steps back into the kitchen, careful to shut the glass door behind him. For a moment he watches Maxwell round on Kepler again, watches Jacobi light a new cigarette before he pours himself a glass of water from the sink.

There’s beer in the fridge and scotch on the counter. He drinks the water in fast gulps and almost chokes on it.

Maxwell slams the door open again and Kepler follows her out. Neither of them say anything to him, and he doesn’t understand the look she gives him as she passes.

He goes and meets Jacobi out on the porch. Jacobi holds out his cigarette and Doug takes it, takes a long drag. He has about a billion questions, but instead he just passes the cigarette back.

Kepler watches them from the kitchen.

He says “Daniel,” and then Daniel kisses him.

Daniel kisses him, captures Doug’s mouth in his and his head with the hand with the cigarette in it, and he feels the flame brush past his ear, hover and drop ash in his hair. Daniel’s tongue pulls him closer, deepens the kiss. He can feel Kepler’s gaze on him, on them, and he grabs the cigarette out of Daniel's hand, drops it and grinds it into the floor as he walks Daniel against the railing and nearly bends him over it with a roll of his hips. He’s not hard yet but Daniel is, and Doug brushes his thigh against it, just enough that Daniel grunts into his mouth and puts both of his hands on Doug’s waist.

Doug pulls back for a second and says, “so how are we doing this?”

Kepler says, “Well—”

“I’m not talking to you,” he says looking at Daniel, who’s doing his best not to look Doug in the eye. He strokes a hand through Daniel's hair and says, “how do you want to do this?”

Daniel says “shit,” and blushes, squirms in his arms

“He likes being told what to do,” says Kepler

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Doug snaps. To Daniel he says, softly, “come on sweetheart. Tell me what’d you like.”

“Kissing,” Daniel pants, eyes squeezed tight.

Doug takes his hand, tugs him and leads him back into the apartment, and Kepler genially steps aside to let them through, gesturing toward the bedroom

Kepler’s bedroom is just as normal as the rest of his house, and if Doug thinks about it too much he’ll lose his goddamn mind. Instead he tugs Daniel down onto the bed, half in his lap, and kisses him again. Daniel melts into the kiss, threads his hands in Doug’s hair and tugs, lifting his head to give him a better angle.

Kepler takes a seat on the bed and Daniel pulls back and reaches for him, keeping a hand in Doug’s hair. Kepler goes to him, meets him in the middle of the bed, plasters their bodies together, and dives in.

Doug ignores that little part of the brain that’s yelling _what the fuuuuuck_ and watches them. For the year of dancing around each other, he’s never seen them together before and here, with Daniel’s fingers tugging him forward, tightening in his hair he sees the rhythm of them, the familiarity, the intimacy. The subtle twists of their bodies that meet and match almost unconsciously. They’ve had years of practice and Doug feels briefly like a voyeur before Daniel pulls back, panting, and affixes his mouth to Doug’s neck. Kepler moves closer, strokes a hand down Daniel’s back and raises an eyebrow at Doug.

He opens his mouth to say... something, anything, but Kepler kisses him anyway, deep and dirty, and in a way that makes Doug realize how well Kepler must suck cock. Jesus.

His hands wander, one under Daniel’s shirt and the other under Kepler’s, and Kepler pulls away briefly to divest himself of it and to help Daniel out of his own. They kiss each other. Doug takes off his own shirt and crawls up behind Daniel, kisses him softly across his shoulders.

“Do you like this?” He says softly into his ear. “Do you like this? The three of us?”

Daniel whines and drops his head back against Doug’s chest with a gasp, and Kepler surges forward to kiss Doug above him, trapping Daniel between their arms. Doug keeps one hand at the base of Daniel’s neck, giving what he hopes is a comforting squeeze, and meets Kepler halfway. He runs his other hand in Kepler’s hair, just because he can.

And he can’t consolidate them, the Kepler tugging Doug’s hair free from its scrunchie and nipping his lips with the guy he was all fucked up over these last six months. And he’s been wanting this, waiting for it, maybe since before Kepler first cornered him in the office, maybe since Doug saw him across the metal prison table, and if it wasn’t desire at first sight it was certainly something, some kind of draw to Kepler’s cocksure smile and magnetic energy.

For the first time in a while, he’s thinking of Pavlov.

(Don’t do this now. Don’t overthink this.)

Kepler pushes him back against the bed and Daniel comes with him, turns around to straddle Doug and he’s properly distracted for a while.

But while Jacobi nips at his stomach, he wonders what the other man looked like, before Kepler got to him. Because he knows how he looked and this isn’t—this wasn’t his stomach a year ago, not his arms or his legs or his body or— He isn’t who he was a year ago.

(He is, he is, is he?

“A mess,” says Jacobi, when Doug asked him who he was before Goddard, and Doug laughs because he gets it, cheers to that—)

These are the bodies that Kepler’s made them; these are the people Kepler’s made them to be. Here in bed with Kepler, are his creations.

(He’s not, he’s not—)

He’s trying to remember the last time he made a real choice, not a _I’ve given you two shitty options and you have to pick one of them_ , or a _this is what I’ve chosen and now it’s time to get on board_ , which, if he thinks about it, those are basically the same thing, and Daniel is tugging his pants off while Kepler sucks a bruise into his neck and Doug can’t help but groan, loud and long as Kepler captures the noise with his mouth.

And god, maybe this is why Kepler never kissed him, if he has this much of an oral fixation, like he’s trying to suck the oxygen out of Doug’s lungs, and Doug’s dizzy with it, drowning under the attention, and then Daniel’s got a hand on his cock and he has to pull away from Kepler to breathe. Maybe it’s because Kepler looks so offended by the move that he shoves two of his fingers into Kepler’s open mouth but Kepler sucks on them, grabbing Doug’s hand to keep him from pulling away.

And when his fingers are nice and wet, Kepler lets his hand go and growls, “get him ready.” Daniel crawls back up the bed and, okay, at some point he took off his pants too.

With the few brain cells he has left, Doug says, “how about some lube?”

Kepler stares at him. Doug stares at him back and rests a hand on Daniel’s thigh, stroking lightly, until Kepler unceremoniously drops a small bottle next to his head. He doesn’t bother asking about condoms—with the amount of blood and other stuff they’re exposed to on a regular basis, everyone is tested regularly. Daniel bends down to kiss him, almost sweetly. Then he drops forward and flips them so Daniel is lying beneath him, and through it all Doug’s not sure if they ever stop kissing, even as Kepler looms possessively, monitoring every touch and correcting their bodies, adjusting their movement and every press of skin, every kiss, every gasp.

At some point he doesn’t know who he’s kissing, or who he’s touching, or who is touching him, but the contact is constant, all encompassing. It’s something half between a fight and a marathon, and that pinch of control slips away, just out of reach.

(If he could think properly he might understand Daniel a little better now, because when Warren Kepler looks at you, looks you in the eyes like _that_ , there’s no room for questions, no brainpower to do anything but say yes, to gasp something incomprehensible that he somehow understands and babble some promise you know you’ll probably die trying to keep.

Kepler just smiles, and you know it’ll be worth it.)

And Doug loses himself to it, to them, between them, to the three of them together—

\---

There’s no afterglow. He wasn’t expecting one.

(Daniel lights a cigarette and waves off his offer of a ride home.)

He sleeps in his own bed that night, alone, and the air conditioning still doesn’t work. He should take a shower, but instead he lets the evening rest on his skin as he lies on top of his covers and grows a fresh layer of sweat.

He should drink some water.

He should do a lot of things.


	6. Chapter 6

Eiffel’s one-year anniversary with the team comes and goes without any fanfare and he’s perfectly happy with that.

Soon afterwards he finally finishes the pulse beacon relay system and it’s a fucking work of art, if he does say so himself. He’s so proud of it he doesn’t mind that Cutter comes to see it demonstrated personally. Thankfully, he’s too distracted by the system to pay much attention to Eiffel.

This, they celebrate. Maxwell puts a party hat on him while Jacobi pops a bottle of sparkling apple juice through remote detonation and they spend the next twenty minutes trying to find each shard of glass scattered around the conference room. Eiffel worked through the night to get the relay done and he can barely keep his eyes open, but he’s smiling as Jacobi and Maxwell debate how to best hide the charred, sticky mess.

They settle on rearranging the furniture, and deleting the room reservation from the system.

Kepler’s not there, for the demonstration or the party, but he calls Doug into his office after Doug’s taken a nap in the gym shower.

“Well done,” says Kepler, and maybe Eiffel’s just too tired for it, but when they dance that familiar pattern, work their way back against the wall, and Kepler reaches for him, Doug says, “wait.”

Wait.

There’s a breath’s distance between them that feels like a chasm, the brush of Kepler’s fingers familiar, habitual, but hovering at the pause, not touching him. The beat stretches a moment, two, three, and he’s looking at Kepler’s hands because he doesn’t know where else to look.

The tight vise around his heart and his throat says _wait_ , but he has nothing to follow the wait, because why wait? This is good. This is familiar. This is his life.

A small needy voice, sharp, like a peppermint sizzling on a flat tongue wants to say yes but he doesn’t know what question he’s answering. There was never even a question. There was never a question of _can I_ or _do you_ but he said yes all the same. He did, right? At some point he said yes.

Yes to this, to them, him and Kepler in his office and in his bed, and Eiffel simultaneously rigid and pliant like a guard dog sniffing for a clue, like a seal at the zoo responding to a clicker; yes to gunpowder and blood and dust all sweatstuck and clogging up his pores. He said yes and he kept saying yes. He said yes and he said yes, please. _Please_.

Wait.

(There was never a question, but Eiffel said wait and now Kepler’s holding still. Eiffel said wait and he’s waiting. Kepler’s holding the distance.)

And maybe the problem was upgrading the intimacy, if that’s what you want to call it, because the sweatslick of Kepler’s skin, the drag of his body, and the flush of his chest are fucking haunting him, and Doug was too lust drunk to map him, to count scars and freckles and name every softly greying hair. He’s already forgotten the taste of him, and the sheer fucking want to put his mouth on Kepler is coming from the same place that wants the glass of scotch on the desk.

Every trace of exhaustion has melted away and he’s wild with it, a ferocious keening in his chest and some kind of fury at himself for letting this happen, letting himself get _weak_ to this, to him, and of all the things that used to matter to Eiffel, an anger at this kind of flaw—calling these feelings a flaw, for one—is new. And of all the ironies, this is something Kepler should have burned out of him by now. Instead, he’s this. Kepler made him this.

( _Wait; what the hell are you waiting for?_ )

So here it is, the ghost hovering between them, this Bride of Frankenstein bullshit, this monstrous thing that holds his heart. He’s sick with it. He wants to write poems about it, to Kepler’s soft eyes and toothy smile, and maybe in another life Kepler could have been the wild dog, and him the steady hand, something sharp and gentle.

(And then there’s Jacobi. Daniel. And he can’t. He can’t.)

It’s the angry flutter in his heart and a year of bitterness saying, _wait, wait. Not like this._

_Not like this, or not at all._

“I don’t,” says Doug, and the two syllables slip past his tongue before he can’t make a decision. He shuts his mouth and takes a shaky step away from Kepler. The other man’s hands are at his sides, casual, as if they’d never reached forward in the first place.

He looks Kepler in the eyes then, briefly as the other man turns to slip behind his desk, and there’s a glimpse of something in his gaze, some strange humanity that Doug doesn’t understand. For a second he thinks, _wait, hold on, I fucked up, come back, I’ll—_ but he doesn’t have an end to that sentence and his mouth is too dry to speak and he still doesn’t know whether it’s reflex or desire.

He’s not sure if he cares.

“Major—“

“Colonel,” Kepler drawls.

“Col— wait, really? Since when?”

“Recently.”

“Huh,” says Doug, and it's gone, the moment, any hesitation or fear. The look in Kepler's eyes. After all, they're professionals. “Are we getting promotions too?”

“How about a change of scenery instead?” Kepler says, and tosses him a shrink-wrapped book. Eiffel manages to catch it and it crinkles in his hands as he flips it over.

“What’s it about?” He asks, reading the title.

_Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual._

Kepler flashes his teeth and says, “the big picture.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> get in kids, we're going to space!
> 
> @lesbianjackrackham on tumblr
> 
> [art](https://tanis-drawings-2point0.tumblr.com/post/173087906835/at-some-point-he-said-yes-yes-to-this-to-them) by taniushka12


End file.
